Rebels attack Haiti's second-largest city
Reports: Police reinforcements sent; rebels withdrawing
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Youths push a car away from a burning police station Sunday in Cap Haitien, Haiti.
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CNN's Lucia Newman reports on anti-government rebels moving into Haiti's second-largest city.
Demonstrators in Haiti are demanding that President Jean-Bertrand Aristide step down.
Aristide is vowing to fight to the end to protect democracy and his regime.
(Contains graphic images of violence) Rebels led by formerly exiled paramilitaries take over more cities in Haiti.
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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (CNN) -- Haiti's government sent reinforcements to Cap Haitien after rebels seeking to oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide moved into the country's second-largest city Sunday, storming police headquarters and freeing prisoners.
A government source told CNN the rebels had withdrawn from Cap Haitien by Sunday evening, but witnesses and journalists said gunfire could still be heard around the city.
Aristide told a crowd at a Carnaval celebration in Port-au-Prince that additional police would be sent to Cap Haitien, on the northern coast.
The government source said the reinforcements were on their way Sunday afternoon.
With a population of about 500,000, Cap Haitien is the Aristide government's last stronghold in northern Haiti.
Walter Eussenius, owner of the Mont Joli Hotel in Cap Haitien, said rebels moved into the city about 10 a.m. Sunday.
"The population is terrorized and the city is completely surrounded," Eussenius told CNN in a telephone interview. Machine gun fire could be heard in the background as he spoke.
"They came in, went by the port, locked it up," he said. "They locked up the international airport, roamed through town firing and commandeered the prison, released the prisoners."
Eussenius said the situation in the city was "very chaotic" and the police force appeared to have withdrawn.
"Who is in control? I don't know," he said.
Eussenius said he said he drove three miles to the airport and was told that rebels had taken over the facility and tried hijack an airplane.
The account backed up a Dominican pilot, who said men armed with machetes boarded a plane in Cap Haitien and forced the pilot to fly to Port-au-Prince.
"We called one of our managers from over there who says there was shooting and the airport is closed," said the pilot, Ricardo Faustela. "So right now we are not flying, and we don't know what is happening."
The Red Cross estimates more than 50 people have been killed since the rebellion erupted February 5 in the city of Gonaives. The rebels say Aristide's government is corrupt and are calling for new elections.
Aristide's supporters set up roadblocks and barricades Sunday on the road between Gonaives and Bon Repos, where a large group of heavily armed men attacked a police station Saturday night.
Police said a civilian was killed and an officer was grazed in the head with a bullet. Bon Repos residents said the incursion was the first in the town, which is on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.
Sunday's violence came the morning after an international delegation left Haiti, having failed to persuade Aristide's political opposition to agree to a U.S.-backed power-sharing plan to resolve the tensions.
Aristide had agreed to the plan, but the opposition said it would accept nothing short of his resignation.
The international envoys told reporters Saturday they had given Haiti's political opposition until 5 p.m. Monday to accept or reject the plan.
The proposal calls for the appointment of a new prime minister acceptable to both sides, a bipartisan Cabinet, new elections to be overseen by international observers and the disarming of militias.
Aristide, a former priest, has faced criticism since an election in 2000 that observers called fraudulent.
Opposition parties accuse his supporters of using violence to intimidate them. He has said repeatedly that he will not willingly step aside until his term of office expires in 2006.
The situation has prompted U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to decide to appoint a special adviser to Haiti.
Nearly 40,000 Haitians fled the country after a 1991 coup that ousted Aristide, who was restored to power in 1994 after U.S. military intervention.
In Washington, Rep. Christopher Cox, a California Republican and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the violence shows that President Clinton's move to return Aristide to power was a mistake.
"He is, of course, a brutal thug," Cox said on CNN's "Late Edition."
California Democratic Rep. Jane Harman, a member of the Homeland Security Committee, urged that the United States not act unilaterally.
"I think we should be acting through the United Nations and some of our international organizations to bring a coalition of peace-loving nations to bear on this problem," she told CNN.
Over the weekend, the United States issued a travel warning, telling American citizens it is unsafe to remain in Haiti.
The U.S. State Department has ordered the departure of all family members and nonemergency personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince and urged American citizens to depart.
A team from the U.S. Southern Command is in Port-au-Prince to assess the security situation for the U.S. Embassy and the estimated 20,000 Americans in the nation.
On Friday, Canada's embassy asked Canadians to leave Haiti. The Peace Corps has also ordered its volunteers out. Foreigners flocked to the capital's airport, waiting in lines to find flights home.
CNN's Lucia Newman and Ingrid Arnesen contributed to this report.
